


The Orionid Incrimination

by speccygeekgrrl



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 17:59:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all started that night they went stargazing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Orionid Incrimination

One day, Howard is going to look back and blame everything that happens from that day forward on the Orionids. Blame maybe isn't the right word (except, let's face it, it's the one his mother would use) but it's easier to chalk everything up to a meteor shower than to scrutinize the events leading up to that big one and admit that it was a long time in the making. He'll blame it on the Orionids and Sam Adams (the beer, not the historical figure) and never actually accept the fact that he's half responsible for what happened, more than half depending on how you look at it.

The way Raj looks at it, it's more than half Howard's fault, but he fully admits to being the one who actually sets things in motion. The way he sees it, it had to happen eventually, and the time just seemed right, and that was definitely partly Howard's fault.

So this is how it happened:

"Forget the telescopes," Howard said, "when was the last time you looked at the sky without a telescope?" He looked a little furtive, and he'd closed the door behind him when he came into the office, so Raj figured he was hiding from someone, a theory which only gained credence when Howard added, "I figure if we're going to get away from the light pollution in time for peak activity we should leave soon."

"And where are you planning to go?" Just because it was an evasion plan didn't mean it wouldn't be fun, and it _had_ been a long time since the particle astrophysicist had looked at the stars just for the hell of it.

"Big Bear City. Where the Astronomy Expo is, you know."

"Just five months too late for that." Before a dejected look could get started on Howard's face, Raj stood up from his desk. "Sure, why not? I want to drive though."

"Really? Excellent."

Of course, they couldn't just leave-- though they did leave work that easily, it took them a while to get out of Pasadena and on the road. They'd struck a balance between too prepared and not prepared enough, mostly involving canvas chairs, beer, and laser pointers, and then they found the usual middle ground concerning the radio, which was really only a question of whose iPod to plug in first, and then it was just coasting, highway from LA to San Bernardino right to the edge of the national forest. The temperature dropped as the elevation rose, until it actually felt like October and not like the last gasp of a summer that wouldn't give up.

The sun was just touching the horizon when they found a suitable place to set up for stargazing. After a quick and liberal dousing of bug spray, each man popped open a beer and settled down to watch the sunset fade to black.

"Are you sure this meteor shower has peak activity so early?" Raj asked when he failed to see any shooting stars for half an hour after twilight ended, cutting off Howard's brainstorming aloud for Halloween.

"What? Of course it does." Howard didn't sound as sure as his words wanted to seem, and he pulled his phone out too quickly. "I'll google it."

"I think the Orionids peak closer to dawn. Didn't you check before you asked me to come out here with you?"

"I checked it... earlier this week, okay? They peak..." Howard trailed off, shoved his phone back into his pocket and held out another beer. "Look, we're already here, we might as well stay until we see a few, right?"

"You are such an ass," Raj said, but he accepted the bottle and the premise anyway. "Who were you in such a hurry to avoid that we came out here six hours too early?"

"No one! I wasn't avoiding-- okay, I might have done something to Sheldon's desk that required leaving the county for a little while. I'm not avoiding him, though! More like... preemptively escaping." Before Raj could ask, he added, "I set up a camera, you'll see eventually."

"Nice. As long as I can see the fallout, I don't mind being your alibi."

"You'd be my alibi anyway, man. Whether you like it or not. Look!" One hand shot up, tracing the path of an already-gone meteor. "First one. See, it's not too early."

"I missed it." Raj had been watching the other man, not the sky; he turned his attention back to the stars. He caught the next one, and then they both saw a particularly bright one. By the time the number of meteors they'd seen equaled the number of beers they'd gone through, looking up had given them both neck aches, and they gave up their canvas seats to lay on the hood of the car.

"That's not a constellation," Raj protested when Howard tried to point out a shape in the sky. "You're making that up, dude. That one in the middle isn't even a star, it's a satellite."

"No way. I'm telling you, that's part of Camelopardalis."

"And I'm telling you you're wrong. Come on, you work with satellites all the time, accept that you're looking at another one here."

"Huh. There are so many things we look at so much that they seem commonplace, but they aren't." With his head tipped back against the car Howard sounded strange, distracted, solitary. Raj held his breath, counting the seconds that passed by in silence. "It's crazy what you take for granted sometimes, right? Like--"

Not long enough, the time he spent weighing those words; Raj lunged forward and shut Howard up with a clumsy press of his mouth, off-center in the darkness, and he couldn't breathe until lips pressed back, too slow to shake off the surprise but getting there eventually. Howard lifted a hand to Raj's cheek as he pulled back.

"What was that about?" He sounded-- not angry, which was good. Not thrilled, though. Bemused.

"That wasn't what you were talking about?"

"What? I was talking about the stars, Raj." Instantly ice skittered down Raj's spine-- _what had he done?_\-- before Howard moved, not much, only his thumb brushing against Raj's cheek. "There's some subtext here I didn't pick up on, isn't there."

"You could say that," Raj said a little weakly. The 'subtext' seemed obvious to him, but he was the one who'd been increasingly curious for months now, thoughts hopelessly circling around a few moments-- that one night up at the North Pole, their brief stint at being goth, the exact instant when he looked at Howard's ass in those ridiculously tight pants and wondered not how he managed to get them on but how easy it might be to get him out of them. "You've never considered--?"

"I'm considering now." Considering apparently involved touching, which was fine by Raj, who found he liked the way Howard's hands splayed out over his chest. "Is this just because you're drunk? Because you do things when you're drunk that would horrify you sober."

"I'm not drunk. Maybe a little bit buzzed, but it's not because of that." Just to be fair, he settled his hands on Howard's narrow hips, thumbs catching on his beltloops; he wondered if the lack of curves should be more disconcerting than it was, because it wasn't, not at all. "Are you only considering it because you're drunk?"

"No. I mean, I am drunk, but I take all offers of intimacy seriously." After a short pause, Howard added, "We're going to have to try that again before I can decide."

"What, this?" This time the kiss was accurate from the start, and fully interactive, tongues making half-shy forays into each other's mouths before Howard made a soft whimpery sound and took control, both hands weaving into Raj's hair while he made a detailed survey of the backs of Raj's teeth. The sudden assertiveness was shockingly hot, and it was pure instinct for Raj to press closer to Howard, pinning him to the hood of the car, hips pressing together with promising friction in all the right places.

"Okay, yes, consideration phase complete, _yes_," Howard mumbled against Raj's mouth, "this is a fantastic idea." They kissed again, fleeting licks along each other's lips, and he suggested in between smooches, "Maybe in the car?"

"Right, that would be good." Raj didn't want to give up the closeness for long enough to open the car door, but Howard pushed him away after a moment longer and the distance gave him a moment to process that the backseat of his car was finally going to see some action, action that included his best friend. The sudden flood of the car's interior light blinded them both for a second, and Raj's vision cleared to the sight of Howard adjusting himself in those incomprehensibly tight pants, looking uncomfortable and excited all at once. "Seriously, do you use a shoehorn to get those on, dude?"

"I'm more concerned with getting them off at the moment." That was fair enough. Raj's hands went to his belt buckle, and he opened it by touch alone, too caught on Howard's flushed cheeks and darkened eyes to look away. There was something almost panicky in his gaze, hypersensitive, and when Raj laid his hands on Howard's chest he swore he could feel the arrhythmia in his heartbeat, pounding so quickly in his narrow chest. "Have you done this before?"

"No. Don't worry, we're geniuses, we won't fuck it up," Raj half-joked, only halfway because he had to reassure himself that some furtive googling and the occasional gay porno were decent enough guidelines to make this good for them both. He was still debating how far he was actually willing to take this when Howard surprised him with a hand down his pants and a mouth on his ear.

"I'm not entirely inexperienced," he breathed, palming Raj at an awkward angle until Raj helped out by opening his fly and giving him room to move. "Plus, engineers know how to make it work."

"You've done this--?" Raj gave up halfway through the question, letting his head drop to Howard's shoulder with a pleased sigh. Howard had very deft hands, something Raj hadn't fully appreciated before now.

"I did some experimenting when I was at MIT, yeah." After a slow squeeze, Howard let go, nudging Raj backwards. "In the car? Horizontal?"

"No," Raj said, determined to surprise Howard in return. He got in the car but didn't move over, pulling Howard close to stand between his sprawled legs instead. "You stay vertical. If you can," he amended teasingly, dragging pants down past bony hips and feeling brave for not flinching when Howard's cock bobbed in front of his face. He'd never considered the practical aspects of taking a Jewish lover, but now that he was up close and personal with a circumcised penis, he decided he liked the looks of it.

The taste wasn't anything special, but the reaction from just the first tentative lick was entirely worth it; Howard gasped and shivered, bracing himself against the car. "You don't have to--" Raj licked again, then sucked, getting the hang of it pretty rapidly. "No, you do have to, keep doing that," Howard changed his mind quickly, and Raj laughed around him, gripping his hips hard when they jerked forward. All the pointers he picked up from the internet started to be useful, and sooner than he expected Howard splayed a hand out in his hair and warned, "I'm almost there."

Pulling away at the last moment seemed like cheating; Raj squeezed Howard's tiny ass and sucked insistently, determined to see this through to the end. Howard went unexpectedly still when he came, breathing a low heartfelt _fuck_. Leaning out past him, Raj spit onto the ground, then rested his head against Howard's hip. Fingers carded through his hair gently before Howard shifted away; he tugged his pants back into place and sank to his knees, looking up at Raj with a dazed smile.

"You really haven't done that before? Talk about naturally gifted." He pulled Raj down for a quick kiss and picked up where he'd left off, tugging Raj's pants down and taking him in hand again. "I, on the other hand, worked hard on the skills you're about to benefit from."

"No one doubts your dedication to sex." Context really changed an expression: Howard's smirk had never made Raj feel lightheaded before, but his general-purpose lewdness had never been aimed at Raj, either. It was too much to watch when Howard licked his lips and leaned in; Raj had to close his eyes, almost overwhelmed by the heat of his friend's mouth around him.

Raj had been a little bit too flippant about Howard's dedication. When he said skills, he meant _artistry_, things he did with his tongue that made Raj moan embarrassingly loud, fingers that teased and tickled and nudged in ways Raj didn't even know he'd enjoy. The coup de grace was sudden and startling: Howard pressed one knuckle up behind Raj's balls and that was it, Raj yelped and clutched at thick brown hair reflexively and came hard enough to see more shooting stars than the night sky could offer.

"You're lucky I like having my hair pulled," Howard said, and he looked like he meant it too, all smug glances and lazy smiles as he tucked Raj back into his pants.

"Do you really? Dear god." Raj tugged his hair gently, tipping his head back and kissing the corner of his mouth. "Are you going to be insufferably smug about this?"

"That depends. Can we do it again? Say, as soon as we get back to your apartment?"

"Oh. Not insufferable, insatiable. I should have anticipated that."

"Well, you're the one who's thought about it." Howard kept stealing kisses in between phrases, until finally Raj dragged him halfway into the car and wrapped his arms around skinny shoulders. "Oh good, you are a cuddler. I thought you'd be that type."

"Good guess." For a moment they just looked at each other, noses almost touching, and then Raj grinned. "Maybe you should call your mother and tell her you won't be home tonight."


End file.
